In 2001 Hotwheels did a toy line of transforming cars called Shogun Racers. The toys represented tuned race cars, and had Starcom type power deploy mechanisms in them, which when activated slowly became something else. There were three molds in the line, a plane, sub and snowmobile (featured). Some time after these were released, a bigger toy was released as part of the line, the Transmorph ATV.

The smaller toys came with little comic book pack ins that detailed the driver of the vehicle, and their rivalry with another Race team, but the cars were all assigned to the wrong drivers as I recall. Apart from that, I didn’t see anything else about these toys, no cartoon, no other comics, nothing. Not even TV adverts. After the Transmorph ATV was released, I think the line died. There’s not even a reference to these on the official Hotwheels site, and I usually can’t see any of these up for sale on eBay. I remember writing a short review on Amazon years ago, which might be here. The discontinuation is a shame, this toy line deserved more.

Hotwheels Shogun Racers: Transmorph ATV contents: Transmorph ATV, Jet, 2 missiles, instruction sheet.

To start with I'll make my feelings clear, this toy is one of the best toys ever. It starts off as a normal enough looking car carrier, with red and blue the primary colours. The wheels have rubber tyres and roll freely, preety much what you'd expect from a toy car.

After pressing and holding a switch at the back, the whole thing starts to whirr with electric motors. The back sides come down, Prop engines fold up, an air skirt deploys over the wheels, and lastly some wings pop up. This is all automatic after the initial ‘one touch’ and takes around 7 seconds to finish. The wheels are still in contact with the ground, so the vehicle still rolls freely, the illusion of it being a hovercraft is done well. While this pretty sweet in itself, it does get better... After pressing that same switch again, the whole front end of the ATV opens up, revealing a loading ramp for one of the smaller Shogun Racers!

The ramp has a strong spring car launcher for use on a level surface, but its redundant because the inside car rolls off the ramp when the ramp deploys downward anyway. Near to the activation switch there is a direction switch, this reverses the direction of the action, and once the initial swich is pressed again, the whole unit closes up again to the hovercraft mode. Press it again and it reverts back to the ATV, with only the wings needing manual resetting.

The top of the ATV has 2 doors that can flip open revealing a small jet, with 2 missile launchers. I think this feature was added as an afterthought to pack in more action, but the transforming gimmick is so crazy, this little jet pales in comparison.

Click on the thumbnails 1 through 3 for pictures of the Transmorph ATV in all three modes, and fig 4 and 5 for quicktime movies of the transformation sequence. (The quicktime vids are around 4MB each, so please be patient while they download)

 

Hotwheels Shogun Racers: Blizzard contents: Blizzard tuner, Display base, Mini comic, instruction sheet.

The featured Shogun Racer is the Snowmobile, the Blizzard. To start with it looks like a normal 'tuned' race car model, with plenty of detail, its painted with decals and logos all over. The wheels are free rolling, and actually have rubber tyres, a nice touch. A pair of skis are attached to the rear spoiler, these are detachable, more on these later.

Once you press the engine air intakeon the bonnet the car transforms slowly into a Snowmobile. The whole chassis realigns, 2 extra wheels pop out the back and a ram bar is revealed from the front. The previously mentioned skis can clip onto the front wheels (which you have to do yourslef obviously) but otherwise its like one of those old Starcom toys, press the button, and away it goes, and because the smaller vehicles are wind up no batteries required for the smaller cars!

Fig 6 and 7are of the blizzard, and fig 8 is a QT video of the cars transformation..